The Idaho Vandals are the intercollegiate athletic teams of the University of Idaho. The Vandals participate in the NCAA's Division I FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision, commonly referred to as I-A) in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC).
In addition to football, the intercollegiate athletic program fields two teams (men's & women's) in the following sports: basketball, golf, tennis, cross-country, and track (indoor & outdoor). Volleyball, soccer, and swimming are varsity sports offered only for women.
The university's official colors are silver & gold, honoring the state's mining tradition. Because these metallic colors in tandem are not visually complementary for athletic uniforms, black & gold are the prevalent colors for the athletic teams, with an occasional use of silver, similar to the University of Colorado, whose official colors are also silver and gold. Under head coach (and alumnus) Chris Tormey, the football team changed from yellow gold to metallic gold in 1995, and the other teams followed. Yellow gold and black were the colors used by the most of the university's varsity teams from 1978-95.
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IDAHO VANDALS TICKETS
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Conference affiliations
UI joined the
WAC in July 2005, moving from the
Big West Conference, which it had joined in 1996, moving back to Division I-A after 18 years in I-AA. Because the Big West discontinued football after the 2000 season, the UI was a "football-only" member of the
Sun Belt Conference for four seasons (2001-04).
Prior to July 1996, UI competed in the
Big Sky Conference for 33 years; it was a charter member in 1963. The Big Sky has been a
Division I-AA conference since I-AA's formation in 1978, but from 1963-77, the conference was a "college division" (later
Division II) for football. Although a charter member of the Big Sky, Idaho maintained its "university division" (Division I) status, with its additional football scholarships, by playing a non-conference schedule of Division I teams. Idaho moved down to the new I-AA division in 1978 as the Big Sky moved up from Division II.
From 1922-58, Idaho competed with eight of the present
Pac-10 schools as a member of the
Pacific Coast Conference. The PCC disbanded in the spring of 1959; Idaho then competed as an independent for four years until the Big Sky was launched in 1963.
[1]
Facilities
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The University of Idaho has numerous on-campus facilities for the athletic program.
[2] The
Kibbie Dome indoor stadium also houses the athletic department offices, locker rooms, weight room, and training facilities. The 16,000 seat arena, enclosed in 1975, is the venue for football and basketball. Since 2001, massive black curtains have been hung around the basketball seating configuration and the arena is called the "Cowan Spectrum." The Kibbie Dome's indoor facilities offer track & field and tennis a place to practice and compete with the five-lane, 290 meter track and nine tennis courts.
The historic
Memorial Gymnasium (1928) is the home for women's volleyball, and also hosts early season basketball games. South of the "Mem Gym" is the Swim Center and the P.E. Building (formerly the new "Women's Gym"), which houses practice gymnasiums. These facilities were completed in 1970.
Outdoor facilities include the 18-hole championship
golf course, directly south of the Kibbie Dome. The first nine holes opened in 1933 and nine more were added in 1968
[3]; the original clubhouse was replaced in 1969. West of the Kibbie Dome is the 400-meter outdoor track & field stadium, opened in the early 1970s and named for newly-crowned Olympic champion decathlete
Dan O'Brien in September 1996.
In addition, there are athletic practice fields east of the Kibbie Dome, as well as numerous tennis courts. The baseball field, soccer field, and intramural fields are located at the spacious northwest corner of campus.
Mascot
Idaho’s student-athletes go by a name earned nearly a century ago by a basketball team coached by Hec Edmundson, whose teams played defense with such intensity and ferocity that sports writers said they “vandalized” their opponents. The mark made by that 1917 team went far deeper than wins and losses on the court. In 1917, Harry Lloyd “Jazz” McCarty – a writer for the student newspaper, the Argonaut – subtly tagged the team with a new nickname in a pregame write-up: “The opening game with Whitman will mark a new epoch in Idaho basketball history, for the present gang of ‘Vandals’ have the best material that has ever carried the ‘I’ into action.” McCarty’s indirect suggestion stuck. By 1921, McCarty and Edward Maslin Hulme, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, succeeded in their push to have Vandals officially adopted as the nickname for Idaho teams.
[4]
Rivalries
Washington State
Since returning to
Division I-A status for football in 1996, Idaho has rekindled its rivalry with
Washington State, eight miles (13 km) to the west in
Pullman. The annual game, usually played at
Martin Stadium in Pullman, was renewed in 1998 after just two meetings in two decades, and is referred to as the "
Battle of the Palouse." The Cougars hold an immense advantage in the series (70-18-3 .786), but the Vandals did win back-to-back meetings in 1999-2000, following 14 straight Cougar victories from 1966-98. The last game played on the Idaho side of the border in this series was in 1966, a mudbath won by WSU. This game followed consecutive Idaho victories in 1964-65, which had been preceded by nine straight Cougar wins.
[5] Two of the recent games played in Pullman (1999 & 2001) were designated as Idaho "home games" to help reach existing NCAA minimum attendance requirements. The 2004 game was a designated Idaho home game for revenue purposes.
[6] The 2003 game was played in
Seattle at
Seahawks Stadium. The three games played in Pullman from 2005-07 were all WSU home games.
The last game in the series was played in 2007, a 45-28 WSU victory, their seventh straight over the Vandals. At the request of Vandals head coach
Robb Akey, a former WSU assistant who became the Vandal head coach in 2007, the game will be played every four years rather than annually.
Boise State
Boise is 300 highway miles (480 km) south of Moscow, and many UI students are from the
Treasure Valley (greater Boise area), the major population area of the state. Idaho has had a major in-state rivalry with
Boise State since 1971;
BSU joined the
Big Sky in 1970 but the football teams did not meet that season. BSU & UI moved to
Division I-AA in 1978 and to
Division I-A in 1996, joining the
Big West.
Since 2000, the Vandals' football team has not been competitive against BSU, losing 10 straight games. Dominance in this rivalry has come in streaks, as the Vandal football team won 12 consecutive games over BSU from 1982-93, after the Broncos had dominated the previous decade.
[7]
Both schools are currently members of the
WAC.
- of the 2008 football game in Moscow
Montana
For most of its history, Idaho had an intense interstate rivalry with the
University of Montana in
Missoula. The teams have met for football 84 times (second only to the 91 games with Washington State). UI and Montana first played in 1903, and played every year from 1914-95 (except during the war years of 1918 and 1943-44 when neither school had a team). Montana was also a member of the
Pacific Coast Conference until 1950, and a fellow charter member of the
Big Sky in 1963. Idaho leads the overall series 55-27-2 (.667), but Montana has dominated the rivalry since 1991.
[8]
The teams have played just five times since Idaho moved back up to
Division I-A in 1996, with the I-AA Montana Grizzlies winning the last four, the most recent meeting being in 2003. The winner of the Idaho-Montana game claims the
Little Brown Stein.
Idaho State
University of Idaho and
Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, have enjoyed a rivalry since both schools were founding members of the Big Sky Conference. Idaho has traditionally been dominant in this rivalry, particularly in football, with the schools respective basketball programs being much more competitive. The football teams last met in 2008 in Moscow, with Idaho winning 42-27.
Noted track athletes
Joachim Olsen of
Denmark, the 2004
Olympic bronze medalist in the
shot put, competed for the Vandals from 1999-2003, winning the NCAA outdoor championship in 2000. He was a 10-time All-American and never finished worse than third in the shot put in eight career NCAA indoor and outdoor appearances.
Dan O'Brien, a former hurdler on the UI track team in the late 1980s, won the
gold medal in the
decathlon at the
1996 Summer Olympics in
Atlanta, as well as multiple World Championships. He received his bachelor's degree in 1993, and the outdoor track & field stadium where O'Brien trained for these world titles was named for him in September 1996.
Angela Whyte, Whyte was a four-time NCAA All-American and five-time Big West champion at Idaho, where she helped lead the women’s team to 2001 and 2003 Big West team championships. She also earned Big West Female Athlete of the Year honors in 2001 and Big West Female Track Athlete of the Year honors in 2003. Member of Canada's 2004 and 2008 Olympic track teams.
2008-2009 UI Basketball Season Results
| Opponent
| Result
| Score
| Record(Conf.)
| Opponent
| Result
| Score
| Record(Conf.)
|
| Evergreen St. (NAIA)
| Win
| 91-69
| 1-0
| @ New Mex. St.
| Loss
| 71-74
| 8-9(2-2)
|
| Michigan St.
| Loss
| 62-100
| 1-1
| @ Louisiana Tech
| Loss
| 63-74
| 8-10(2-3)
|
| @ Gonzaga
| Loss
| 46-80
| 1-2
| New Mex. St.
| Win
| 67-57
| 9-10(3-3)
|
| North Dakota St.
| Win
| 78-69
| 2-2
| Boise St.
| Win
| 63-59
| 10-10(4-3)
|
| @ E. Washington
| Loss
| 59-69
| 2-3
| Nevada
| Loss
| 65-70
| 10-11(4-4)
|
| Cal. Irvine
| Win
| 101-47
| 3-3
| @ Hawai'i
| Loss
| 49-71
| 10-12(4-5)
|
| @ Sac. State
| Win
| 72-58
| 4-3
| Utah St.
| Loss
| 53-62
| 10-13(4-6)
|
| @ Portland St.
| Loss
| 65-68
| 4-4
| San Jose St.
| Win
| 74-66
| 11-13(5-6)
|
| @ South Carolina St.
| Loss
| 59-66
| 4-5
| @ Boise St.
| Win
| 56-54
| 12-13(6-6)
|
| South Carolina St.
| Win
| 81-68
| 5-5
| Cal. St. Northridge
| Win
| 78-75
| 13-13(6-6)
|
| Texas Southern
| Win
| 67-46
| 6-5
| @ San Jose St.
| Loss
| 64-72
| 13-14(6-7)
|
| Washington St.
| Loss
| 55-41
| 6-6
| @ Fresno St.
| Win
| 71-68
| 14-14(7-7)
|
| @ Idaho St.
| Loss
| 59-61
| 6-7
| Louisiana Tech
| Win
| 66-58
| 15-14(8-7)
|
| @ Nevada
| Win
| 78-73
| 7-7 (1-0)
| Fresno St.
| Win
| 59-56
| 16-14(9-7)
|
| @ Utah St.
| Loss
| 61-70
| 7-8(1-1)
| WAC Tournament(3rd seed)
|
|
|
|
| Hawai'i
| Win
| 67-47
| 8-8(2-1)
| Louisiana Tech
| Loss
| 70-62
| 16-15 (9-8)
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References
- Idaho Historical Data
- Vandal Athletic Facilities - University of Idaho Athletics Official Site — GoVandals.com
- Main_page
- What is a Vandal?
- Idaho Game by Game against Opponents
- ESPN - Washington State 49, Idaho 8 - NCAA College Football Recap
- Idaho Game by Game against Opponents
- Idaho Game by Game against Opponents